Electrical lighting has become commonplace in modern society. Electrical lighting devices are commonly deployed, for example, in homes, buildings or commercial and other enterprise establishments, as well as in various outdoor settings. Even in a relatively small state or country, there may be millions of lighting devices in use.
With the advent of modern electronics has come advancement, including advances in the networking and control capabilities of the lighting devices. By nature, solid state light sources such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) are easily controlled by electronic logic circuits or processors. As increased processing capacity finds its way into the lighting devices for purposes of lighting control, the incorporation of associated communications capabilities, e.g. to allow lighting devices to communicate with system control elements and/or with each other via different communication protocols such as Zigbee, X10, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or the like, is becoming more commonplace. In this way, advanced electronics in the lighting devices as well as the associated control elements have facilitated more sophisticated lighting control algorithms as well as increased networking of lighting devices and/or other devices within the space in which the lighting devices are installed. In addition, lighting devices typically having nearly uninterrupted access to electrical power are ubiquitous; with a lighting device installed in almost every facility.
The advent of the advanced electronics, nearly uninterrupted supply of power, and ubiquitous nature of lighting device deployments makes the lighting device an excellent candidate for incorporation into a network of devices to provide services, such as data communication, location-relevant data, emergency alerts, and the like. When used in the context of a network device or in a network, lighting devices are used primarily as a component of a premises broadband local area network. Some examples include wireless networking such as Wi-Fi or perhaps a Bluetooth-like network. While lighting devices have been developed to include cellular communication capabilities, these cellular communication capabilities installed in lighting devices have primarily been used as repeaters for a cellular communication network in order to extend the coverage of the cellular carrier.
Cellular communication network systems are known for providing cellular coverage over large geographical areas. These large-scale cellular communication network systems provided by cellular carriers include components that facilitate calls from one city, such as New York City, to be completed to another city, such as San Francisco, a great distance away from the originating device. This connectivity is accomplished by use of cellular coverage areas, which are serviced by cellular communication network access points, nodes or base stations operating in a portion of the cellular radio frequency spectrum that cover a geographical area. The cellular communication network system includes components that in response to connection requests from user devices, exchange/forward access request messages, and authorization and authentication messages to establish a cellular communication network connection over the air with the requesting user device. This exchange of messages consumes network resources and bandwidth, and also consumes battery power of the respective user devices. The network components also locate the intended recipient device identified in the connection request, and if authorized set-up communications between the devices.
Similar use of network resources, bandwidth and consumption of user device battery power occurs when a user device accesses a data source, such as a website, music service, video service or the like via the public data network (Internet), or a large-scale cellular communication network.
In the past, user devices were primarily used for making and receiving voice calls, sending and receiving text messages, exchanging data (e.g., sending e-mail), and providing and receiving location information. However, as user devices become more application centric, the user devices, while still performing those primary tasks, are becoming more involved in providing information related to the user's social interactions, business relationships, and daily customs, such as commuting, coffee breaks, shopping and the like, based on applications used by the user device.
For example, solutions have been proposed that allow a user device to receive location relevant information via the large-scale cellular communication network or an available Wi-Fi network in the vicinity of the user device. For example, growth in long term evolution (LTE) technologies, such as LTE Direct or LTE Advanced provided in cellular chipsets manufactured by Qualcomm®, allow devices to exchange messages using cellular radio frequency spectrum. The LTE Direct or LTE Advanced chipsets provide a means for devices to communicate very brief messages in a peer-to-peer fashion without having to gain access to the large-scale cellular communication network via a cellular network provider cellular network access point, such as an eNode-B, a base station or the like. However, these LTE Direct chipsets provide only a brief period of time in which the user device broadcasts short messages and/or receives short messages from similar user devices with the LTE Direct chipset by the large-scale cellular communication network servicing the user device. While LTE Direct may be useful for peer discovery, it does not appear to provide the capability to satisfy peer-to-peer connectivity or to allow the equipped-devices to serve as data sources to user devices.
What is needed is a means for leveraging the advances in both lighting and cellular technology to improve the internetworking of lighting devices and other devices through the utilization of the cellular radio frequency spectrum that improves the lighting device to allow the lighting device to be a more integral participant in the communication infrastructure of a facility, and a participant, instead of a pass through, in the cellular communication infrastructure as a whole.